U.S. Pat. No. 6,210,771, incorporated herein by this reference, arguably discloses a first electrically active textile article. For example, a shirt made of fabric includes regular (e.g., cotton or silk) fibers running in the warp direction and conductive fibers which run in the weft direction. The conductive fibers running in the weft direction can be used to interconnect electrical and electronic components (e.g., resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, and the like) whose leads and pins are soldered to the conductive fibers.
Since U.S. Pat. No. 6,210,771 issued in 2001, those skilled in the art have generally sought to refine and improve upon the basic idea of U.S. Pat. No. 6,210,771. One limitation associated with such an electrically active textile is comfort. The conductive fibers running in the weft direction do not feel as comfortable as cotton fibers or cotton and nylon blends. Also, the conductive fibers do not behave or wear the same as regular textile fibers.
In addition, in the clothing industry, fabric is typically cut into pieces according to a pattern. These pieces are then sewn together. At the seam between a shirt sleeve and the body of the shirt, for example, the conductive fibers in the sleeve do not make electrical contact with the conductive fibers in the shirt body. Also, if the conductive fibers run only in one direction, for example, longitudinally up and down the length of the shirt, an electrical component on the left hand side of the shirt cannot be easily connected to an electrical component on the right hand side of the shirt.
If insulated wires are present in both the weft and the warp directions, connecting a weft wire to a warp wire means stripping both wires of insulation and soldering them together. Resistance welding is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,329,323 incorporated herein by this reference. When insulated wires are used, a solvent must be employed to dissolve the insulation before resistive welding can be accomplished. To terminate signal lines or to avoid unwanted connections, U.S. Pat. No. 6,210,771 suggests cutting the conductive fibers. Thus, numerous manual operations are required.
The field of electrotextiles is thus nearly a decade old with only a few small volume test product launches in the consumer sector. The stagnancy in the development of further improvements is due in part to the lack of cooperation and coordination between the various electronic and textile component manufacturers and system integrators. Efforts to foster such communication between these industries are hampered by their lack of a common language or standardized components.
Additional prior art includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,729,025; 6,852,395; 4,874,124; 6,381,482; 6,687,523; 7,022,917; and 6,611,962, all incorporated herein by this reference.